Aug 03, 2023 - Sale 2643

Sale 2643 - Lot 32

Price Realized: $ 16,900
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 20,000

MARCELLO DUDOVICH (1878-1962)

SOCIETÀ TORINESE AUTOMOBILI ELETTRICI / TORINO. Circa 1910.

79x57 inches, 200 1/2x144 3/4 cm. G. Ricordi & C., Milan.
Condition B / B+: replaced losses with overpainting, repaired tears, creases and abrasions at edges and along vertical and horizontal folds and seam; restoration in image; ink stamps in text; small loss at bottom edge. Two-sheets. Mounted on old linen.

A rare poster and exceptional historical document from the early years of the automobile industry, when an Italian company was founded to make electric vehicles. The STAE (Societa Torinese Automobili Elettrici) was founded in 1905 and produced electric vehicles through 1913, when the company found that it was too difficult to compete with the new internal combustion engines and stopped production. Dudovich's poster is a masterwork of twilight shades of blue, with the color pervading the poster: the sky, the woman's dress, the chauffeur's uniform and the shadows. He elevates the banal action of a woman entering into a car into high art, where the shadows cast by the vehicle's electric light illuminate the front of her elegant dress as she meets a friend waiting inside. The Marcello Dudovich Historical Archive notes that the poster is "practically unobtainable considering that there are no more than three specimens in circulation, all kept in museums." We have found only one other copy at auction in the past 30 years. Manifesti p. 53, Gallo 173.
Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

Property of Penn State's Palmer Museum of Art, sold to benefit the acquisitions fund.